a newspaper writer down to the village--he's from
New York and he's been stayin' to the Tavern ever since he come in
this morning and asked for a room with a bath--and he's goin' to
write up the town. Yes sir-e-e--the whole dad-blamed town! Pictures
of the main street and the old place where Jeddy went to school,
like as not, and--and"--he hesitated for an instant to recall the
exact phrasing--"and interviews with the older citizens who
recognized his ability and gave him a few pointers in the game when
he was only a little tad. That's what's to follow, and it's comin'
out in the New York papers, too--Sunday supplement, colors, maybe,
and--and----"

Sudden recollection checked him in the middle of the tumbled flow of
information. Leaning far out over the dash, he put all his slight
weight against the reins and turned the fat white mare back into the
road with astonishing celerity.

"Godfrey, but that makes me think," he gasped. "I ain't got no time to
fritter away here! I got to git down to the Tavern in a hurry. He'll
be waitin' to hear what I kin tell him."

The thin, wrinkled old face twisted into a hopeful, wheedling smile.

"You know that, don't you, Denny? You could tell him that there wa'n't
nobody in the hills knew little Jeddy Conway better'n I did, couldn't
you? It--it's the last chance I'll ever git, too, more'n likely.

"Twice I missed out--once when they found Mary Hubbard's husband
a-hangin' to his hay mow--a-hangin by the very new clothes-line Mary'd
just bought the day before and ain't ever been able to use since on
account of her feelin' somehow queer about it--and me laid up to home
sick all the time! Everybody else got their names mentioned in the
article, and Judge Maynard had his picture printed because it was the
Judge cut him down. 'Twa'n't fair, didn't seem to me, and me older'n
any of 'em.

"And 'twas just the same when they found Mrs. Higgins's Johnny, who
had to go and git through the ice into the crick just the one week in
all the winter when I was laid up with a bad foot from splittin'
kindling. I begun to think I wasn't ever goin' to git my chance--but
it's come. It's come at last--and I got to cut along and be there!"

Once more he leaned over the dash and slapped the old mare's back with
the slack of the lines.

"Git there, you," he urged, and the complaining buggy went lurching
down the rough road at the same unheard of pace at which it had
ascended. Halfway down the hill, aft